Wildlife is wild, so admire from afar

1of 8Despite alligators' fierce facade, they are normally reclusive, diffident wildlife. Exceedingly rare dangerous encounters almost always involve people whose actions place them in harm's way of gators that have become acclimated to humans through illegal feeding.Photo: Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle

2of 8Despite alligators' fierce facade, they are normally reclusive, diffident wildlife. Exceedingly rare dangerous encounters almost always involve people whose actions place them in harm's way of gators that have become acclimated to humans through illegal feeding.Photo: Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle

3of 8Despite alligators' fierce facade, they are normally reclusive, diffident wildlife. Exceedingly rare dangerous encounters almost always involve people whose actions place them in harm's way of gators that have become acclimated to humans through illegal feeding.Photo: Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle

4of 8Despite alligators' fierce facade, they are normally reclusive, diffident wildlife. Exceedingly rare dangerous encounters almost always involve people whose actions place them in harm's way of gators that have become acclimated to humans through illegal feeding.Photo: Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle

5of 8Many incidents of snakebite occur when a person tries to catch, kill or otherwise engage with a venomous snake. Simply leaving the reptile alone is the surest way to avoid a potentially dangerous encounter.Photo: Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle

6of 8Many incidents of snakebite occur when a person tries to catch, kill or otherwise engage with a venomous snake. Simply leaving the reptile alone is the surest way to avoid a potentially dangerous encounter.Photo: Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle

7of 8Many incidents of snakebite occur when a person tries to catch, kill or otherwise engage with a venomous snake. Simply leaving the reptile alone is the surest way to avoid a potentially dangerous encounter.Photo: Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle

8of 8Many incidents of snakebite occur when a person tries to catch, kill or otherwise engage with a venomous snake. Simply leaving the reptile alone is the surest way to avoid a potentially dangerous encounter.Photo: Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle

Texas’ wild and feral places can be wonderlands, but they aren’t Disneyland.

It pays to remember that and act accordingly, especially this time of year as summer settles in and folks spend more time outdoors, increasing opportunities to encounter wildlife.

Wildlife is just that — wild. That’s what makes them so fascinating and enjoyable to encounter. They are not domesticated livestock or pets. And wild creatures are nothing like the anthropomorphic caricatures that may make for amusing entertainment but do a damaging disservice to both the animals and the humans whose opinions and interactions with wild creatures are shaped and guided by such Pollyannaism. Throw in some outright human ignorance, a bit of arrogance plus some just plain bad luck, and the result can be dangerous and even deadly.

Examples of this unfortunate confluence are exceedingly rare. But they occur. And there has been a spate of them over the past month.

Last week, a woman in Florida was killed by an alligator, the 26th such fatality in that state in the past 45 years.

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The same week, a tourist in Yellowstone National Park was gored by a bison when she walked up to the half-ton wild animal, and two others were battered by a cow elk.

Closer to home, a man near Corpus Christi is recovering after nearly dying after he was bitten by a rattler whose head he had previously severed. Another man, this one in Oklahoma, was not as “lucky.” He died last month when he tried to capture a rattlesnake on a road, was bitten twice and died. This past week, the same tragic fate befell a golfer in South Dakota who was bitten by a rattler.

These incidents, while not aberrations, are extraordinary. Most human/wildlife encounters are anything but dangerous, even when the wildlife involved has the potential to inflict harm. But they offer an opportunity to look at how and such things happen and how to easily avoid them.

Take the alligator incident in Florida.

A 47-year-old woman last seen walking her two dogs along the edge of a freshwater lake was apparently killed by a 12-foot alligator. Her arm was found in the reptile after it was captured, killed and opened. Her two dogs, one of which had wounds consistent with being attacked by a gator, survived.

That evidence offers clues to what happened, and how to prevent it.

In this country, unprovoked attacks by alligators and especially deaths by alligator attack are almost wholly absent outside of Florida. This is not from any lack of alligators.

There are an estimated 5 million alligators in the United States, most of them in three states: Florida (1.5 million), Louisiana (2 million) and Texas, which is home to at least a half-million.

Despite Louisiana having the nation’s largest alligator population, there has been no documented fatal alligator attack in the state in more than 200 years. Texas has a single fatal incident in the past 150-plus years.

Since 1973, alligators have killed 26 people in Florida.

Why the dramatic difference? My guess is that in Florida, alligators and people share the landscape in much closer proximity than in Louisiana or Texas. Almost the whole of Florida is alligator habitat, and the state is smothered with housing developments rimming the shores of tens of thousands of lakes, ponds, river, canals and other waterways gators call home.

It is tempting to say Floridians aren’t as aware of alligator behavior and habits as Louisianans or Texans, and take more uneducated risks. But that’s almost certainly not the case. Most people, especially those raised in urban environments (most, these days), are painfully ignorant of alligator behavior.

Gators are not naturally aggressive toward humans. They are the opposite. Like all wildlife, gators’ natural reaction to humans is to avoid them.

Any alligator that doesn’t slip away, submerge or keep its distance from humans is not behaving normally. And people are almost invariably to blame.

Feeding wild alligators — tossing them fish carcasses or other pieces of food so that the reptiles will come closer so people can watch them — is a sure way to create potential problems. Gators learn to associate people with food and lose their native wariness. This can create a dangerous situation.

Texas prohibits feeding wild alligators, a move aimed at preventing the reptiles from associating people with food. But enforcement of the prohibition is nearly impossible.

It speaks volumes that the 2015 incident that resulted in the only alligator-related death documented in Texas involved a large male gator that had been acclimated to eating food pitched to it in a bayou near Orange. Despite being warned that the gator was potentially dangerous, a man jumped into the bayou at night. The act proved fatal for both the man and the gator.

Any alligator that doesn’t keep its distance or, worse, approaches a person on land or in a boat is a gator not acting naturally. Keep your distance and there will be no problem.

Watch your dog, too. While alligators don’t see people as menu items, they see dogs very differently. Dogs resemble wild quadrupeds — feral hogs, raccoons, coyotes and other mammals — that are regular meals for gators. A dog walking along the shoreline or swimming in a bayou or lake or other waterway holding alligators is an invitation for an alligator to try corralling dinner.

While the circumstances of the recent death of the woman in Florida are unknown, it’s certainly possible the alligator that caused her death initially was after the dogs and the woman tried to prevent the attack and became a target.

Again, alligators are not naturally aggressive toward humans. Yes, a female alligator will ferociously defend her nest and young — something to consider as this year’s alligator eggs are currently incubating in their mud-covered nests. But alligators that have not had their natural wariness of humans short-circuited by illegal feeding poise no danger to people as long as they keep their distance and don’t do something stupid.

The same advice — admire them from a distance by leaving them alone — applies to dealing with venomous snakes, the other potential dangerous wildlife folks are most likely to encounter.

Texas is home to a healthy population of venomous snakes, and each year, about 1,000 Texans are struck by one of them. An average of one or two prove fatal.

Many of those incidents occur when a person is envenomated in the hand, foot or lower leg by a copperhead, rattlesnake or water moccasin they didn’t see before the well-camouflaged reptile struck a wholly defensive move.

But a high percentage of snake bites in Texas — the huge majority, according to medical staff who treat the cases — occur when a person tries to catch, handle or kill the reptile. That was the case earlier this month in the Corpus Christi incident, where the man who had decapitated a diamondback was envenomated when he picked up and handled the severed head. And it was the case with the Oklahoma man who in May died when he was stuck twice by the timber rattlesnake he decided to catch as it crossed a road.

At least half of the snake bites in Texas could be avoided if the victims had left the snake alone. This is easy to do with snakes encountered in parks or other wildlands. But this isn’t a viable option for most Texans when they find a rattler or a copperhead on their porch or in their flowerbed; the potential threat to family members or pets is too high to try peacefully coexisting.

Some of us who see those reptiles as the wonderful and crucial pieces of Texas natural world might be tempted to try to capture and relocate the snake. While admirable, it dramatically increases the chances of being bitten. And it’s not even that good for the snake; research shows almost all species of snakes, venomous and nonvenomous, suffer high mortality when relocated.

If a snake has to be dispatched — and it should never be done unless the snake is definitively identified as venomous and poises a clear danger to humans and pets — a quick hack with a long-handled hoe does the job.

Use a shovel to pick up the dispatched victim and carefully dispose of it without putting hands on the deceased.

Sadly, most encounters between humans and potentially dangerous wildlife turn out much more dangerous for the wildlife than the humans. And in most cases, that’s the human’s fault.

If we’d just leave them alone, enjoy them from a distance and treat them as wild creatures they are, things would work out better for all involved.

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